Outrage, confusion in political circles over media mogul’s decision

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NEW YORK — Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News Channel and other conservative news outlets have been skewering Hillary Rodham Clinton for years, will host a summer fund-raiser for the senator, mystifying some observers and enraging others.

Especially incensed are liberal activists, who for months have decried what they see as a shift to a right on Clinton’s part as the Democrat contemplates a run for president in 2008. They are stunned that she is associating with a man viewed as a cornerstone of the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” a term Clinton herself employed.

“We think that she has been effective on state issues and local issues here in New York,” Murdoch said on a News Corp. earnings call.

The Clinton-Murdoch alliance is not entirely new. The two have been moving toward a détente since 2000, when she won her Senate seat after a campaign that included a series of not-so-flattering Clinton headlines in another Murdoch property, the New York Post.

Murdoch has also developed a relationship with former President Clinton, a prime target of criticism from Fox and the New York Post during his presidency. Murdoch participated in a conference of the Clinton Global Initiative last fall, and the former president is scheduled to address a gathering of News Corp. executives in California later this year.

A business move?Murdoch, whose $60 billion empire is a major presence in New York, is more shrewd businessman than ideologue, and friendly relations with a powerful New York senator are in his best interest. Murdoch also organized a fund-raiser for New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, during his re-election campaign in 2004.

But Clinton’s motive for accepting a Murdoch-sponsored fund-raiser is not quite as clear. She faces minimal opposition in her Senate race — something Murdoch acknowledged this week in an interview on Fox News. And with at least $20 million in her campaign account — a figure that dwarfs that of all her potential rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination — Clinton doesn’t really need the money.

But Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said the arrangement suits Clinton and Murdoch equally well.

“She’s reaching out to a guy who’s on the right side of the spectrum, and she needs some friends there,” Carroll said.

And Murdoch?

“That’s simple — Hillary’s going to run for president, and she might win,” Carroll said.